Control Freaks! Try Micro-Editing Vocal Tracks

EVER WONDER why most famous singers sound
so much better on their records compared to
performing live? It’s not just pitch correction
responsible for their transformation. Deep
composite editing and dozens of edits at
the syllabic and sample levels have been
implemented in the recording. Standout
vocal excerpts have been cherry-picked and
combined and blemishes removed, creating
a track that consistently presents the singer’s
very best capabilities from moment to moment.
You can do the same. Use these micro-editing
techniques to make your vocal track the
crème de la crème.

Mix and Match Record several takes of
the lead vocal track—more than a dozen,
if the singer can handle it without flaming
out. Listen to every take in turn as you play
back the first vocal phrase. Copy the best
parts—even if they’re just fleeting syllables—
to a new, blank track reserved for your final
composite vocal. In choosing the gems, you
should generally be listening for five things:
intelligible lyrics, great intonation, strong
projection, excellent tone, and a strong vibe
that conveys the emotional essence of the
song. But don’t overlook momentary dross. It’s
not uncommon for me to snap up a breathy
syllable, a momentary crack in the singer’s
voice, or other ostensible imperfections that
ooze emotion for a nanosecond in an otherwise
unfeeling phrase.

Fig. 1. The waveform to either side of the edit point is trending downward, toward negative phase, avoiding producing a click.

Fig. 2. This splice, made at the zero crossover point for both the leading and following waveform, nevertheless produces a click because of a phase-trend reversal and high-amplitude spikes with steep slopes on either side of the edit seam.

Fig. 3. This splice produces no click despite the reversal of phase trend (from positive-going to negative-going) at the zero crossover because the amplitudes and slopes are mild to either side of the edit seam.

Once you have the first vocal phrase
cobbled together, move on to the next and
repeat the process. But don’t worry about
poorly assembled snippets with slapdash
transitions that cause clicks and pops in
the composite track. We’ll address all those
pedestrian issues later. Your sole focus should
be on creative cooking until you’ve worked
your way through the entire song and have the
best vocal bits assembled in one track.

Slip and Slide After you’ve built the
composite vocal track, you’re ready to start
micro-editing it in your DAW. Pay attention
to how crisp the phrasing is; it should propel
a rhythmic, uptempo song along or lay back a
bit for a ballad. Within each phrase, cut up and
nudge syllables milliseconds earlier or later
along the timeline where necessary, to make
them lock to the beat. Don’t go overboard,
though, or the vocal will sound robotic.

Copy and Paste In your composite track,
listen for consonants that aren’t clearly voiced,
making the lyric unintelligible. Replace any
swallowed consonants with the same ones
articulated more clearly elsewhere in the song
by copying the champ and pasting it in place of
the lemon. If the consonant in the composite
track should occur at the start or end of a word
or phrase, be sure to paste it so that it voices
squarely on a beat or strong subdivision of the
song. While nudging one syllable or consonant
may not make a noticeable difference in the
overall performance, slide a couple dozen bits
in a four-minute song and the result will be a
more authoritative vocal that’s firmly in the
pocket.

Bump It Up or Down Your composite
track is bound to comprise bits and pieces
sung at different volumes. If any snippet dips
or leaps out even slightly in an unnatural
way, bump the region’s volume up or down
to even it out with surrounding ones. Doing
this will preclude the need to use heavy vocal
compression during mixdown, preserving
depth and nuance. If your DAW doesn’t
allow non-destructive volume adjustments
for regions, draw fader-automation curves
to smooth out the ride. The goal here isn’t
to beat the vocal dynamics into submission
but to mitigate any dips that make the lyrics
unintelligible or peaks that sound jerky.

Smooth the Seams Don’t rely on crossfades
to hide poor-sounding edits; subdued clicks
and pops have a nasty habit of resurfacing
when dynamics processing is subsequently
applied during mixing and mastering. Instead,
optimize each edit seam by adjusting region
boundaries so that each transition occurs
at a zero crossover for both the leading and
following waveform. If possible, place the edit
seam so that the waveform on each side of the splice is trending toward the same polarity
(that is, consistently rising or falling; see
Figure 1); an instantaneous reversal in phase
will often cause a pop even when it occurs at
a zero crossover (see Figure 2). If the edit still
causes a click after finessing its placement,
implement a crossfade on the seam.

Transitions between audio regions often
sound the smoothest where waveforms
have mild slopes on either side of the seam.
(You can often get away with instantaneous
polarity reversals if the amplitude is low and
the slope very mild to either side of the edit
seam; see Figure 3.) The exception is with
hard consonants: Placing the seam right
before the amplitude spike for a t or k usually
sounds best. And an edit that doesn’t occur
at the zero-crossover point, if artfully placed,
can sometimes enhance a following hard
consonant that wasn’t inherently loud enough.

Let It Breathe Take care not to place edit
seams in the middle of breath noises, as
that will make them sound artificial. Don’t
completely eliminate breath sounds either,
unless they’re distracting in some way.
Extinguishing all breathing will make the
vocal sound unnatural—who doesn’t breathe
for four minutes?—and, for uptempo songs,
bereft of urgency.

Enjoy the Fruits of Your Labor If
skillfully and artistically rendered, you can
make a hundred or more edits to a vocal track
without anyone realizing it’s been touched.
The total effect of all your nips and tucks will
be a vocal performance that far surpasses the
quality and impact of any one of the original
takes. It typically takes hours of work to build
such a virtuosic track, but the huge payoff is
totally worth the sweat.